Blood flow and velocity estimation based on vessel transit time by combining 2D and 3D X-ray angiography.

The X-ray imaging equipment could be used to measure hemodynamic function in addition to visualizing the morphology. The parameters of specific interest are arterial blood flow and velocity. Current monoplane X-ray systems can perform 3D reconstruction of the arterial tree as well as to capture the propagation of the injected contrast agent on a sequence of 2D angiograms. We combine the 2D digital subtraction angiography sequence with the mechanically registered 3D volume of the vessel tree. From 3D vessel tree we extract each vessel and obtain its centerline and cross-section area. We get our velocity estimation from 2D sequence by comparing time-density signals measured at different ends of the projected vessel. From the average velocity and cross-section area we get the average blood flow estimate for each vessel. The algorithm described here is applied to datasets from real neuroradiological studies.